


(not) in the stars

by extasiswings



Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Journal Origin, Temporary Character Death, Timeline Zero
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-21
Updated: 2018-08-13
Packaged: 2019-05-26 07:47:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 10,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14996171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/extasiswings/pseuds/extasiswings
Summary: It is not in the stars to hold our destiny, but in ourselves. -William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar.What comes first? How do you make choices when every single one of them, no matter how small, has the potential to change the world? Is there such a thing as fate? Are there certain things that really shouldn’t be changed? That have to happen?At one point, Lucy would have said yes. That there’s value in preserving history. That you can’t change things because you don’t like the outcome. That it isn’t worth the risk.After enough time fighting Rittenhouse, after enough losses...after that there’s very little she’s unwilling to do.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I was innocently going about my business on Twitter yesterday when I came across a tweet by the wonderful Leaf saying "Someone needs to write a fic about how, the very first time future!Lucy went back in time to give the journal to Flynn, she left behind a war companion and came back to a husband because nobody expected the intimate connection it would forge between them." 
> 
> Needless to say, I was...inspired. I have taken liberties, as I often do when I come across prompts, but this is my take on "Timeline Zero" and how the journal happened. How exactly everything went to begin with...well, you'll find out.

What comes first—the chicken or the egg? If a butterfly doesn’t flutter its wings at the exact time it should, what changes?

Lucy Preston spends most of her life not thinking about questions like these, content to leave them to the philosophers and quantum theorists of the world. It’s not that she’s never wondered—she’s a historian after all, considering the impacts of different events on history, and how things might change if something had happened differently is a fun exercise. But that’s all it is. An exercise. At the end of the day, everything did happen the way it happened and there’s no changing it.

History is history. Fixed. Set in stone.

And then, Lucy finds out about time travel and realizes it isn’t just philosophy. It isn’t just an exercise. And nothing is as set as it seems.

What comes first? How do you make choices when every single one of them, no matter how small, has the potential to change the world? Is there such a thing as fate? Are there certain things that really shouldn’t be changed? That have to happen?

At one point, Lucy would have said yes. That there’s value in preserving history. That you can’t change things because you don’t like the outcome. That it isn’t worth the risk.

( _“No!”_ _Gunshot. Blood. Fall._ )

After enough time fighting Rittenhouse, after enough losses...after that there’s very little she’s unwilling to do.

* * *

_“What if we could go back? Stop all of this before it ever started? Seems like it would be easier than this game of historical catch-up we’re playing.”_

_Lucy looks across the room to where Flynn is stretched out across the couch, his glass of vodka long since abandoned on the table next to him. Her own is still half-full, but it also isn’t her first of the night, and his words take a minute to register._

_“Go back...you mean travel on our own timelines?”_

_Flynn tips his head, his eyes dark and distant, clearly lost in thought._

_“It’s impossible,” Lucy reminds him._

_“Is it?” He asks. “Back when all this started, Anthony thought he was close to a solution. Just a matter of numbers and finding someone crazy enough to give it a shot, he said.”_

_**Or desperate enough** , she thinks. Flynn still won’t meet her eyes and she’s cynical enough to wonder, as much as she trusts him, if he’s really asking as a way to stop Rittenhouse or if it’s more personal than that. _

_(There’s a reason she’s careful to keep space between them on nights like this. Alcohol makes her reckless. It would be all too easy to forget herself and ask him for something he either wouldn’t give or would regret after._

_Seven years and he’s as devoted to his wife as he was the day he lost her. Lorena’s ghost hangs between them like a physical wall, and Lucy would never begrudge him his grief, but he’s her partner, her friend, her companion. There’s no one in the world she’s closer to than Garcia Flynn and sometimes she wants him so badly she can’t breathe._

_So. Distance.)_

_Lucy takes a drink._

_“You think Rufus could do it, don’t you?” She asks._

_Flynn shrugs. “I don’t see why he couldn’t.”_

_“Things aren’t that bad,” she says. “We’re not losing.”_

_“We’re not winning either,” Flynn shoots back. His brows knit together when he finally looks over to her._

_“Why are you so against this?”_

_For once, Lucy’s the one who can’t manage to hold his stare, her stomach twisting with shame._

_( **This is Flynn** , she reminds herself. Her Flynn, who has spent years in this fight, just like her. Cynicism or not, she should think better of him. He of all people doesn’t deserve her skepticism.) _

_“It’s dangerous,” she replies._

_“Lucy, don’t—” There’s an edge of frustration in Flynn’s voice before he cuts himself off, and she hears the rest of the sentence anyway._

_**—lie to me. Don’t lie to me. Not to me.** _

_Lucy swallows hard. When she considers the idea—really considers it without adding in her own baggage—she has to admit it’s not a bad one. If it came down to it...well. More options are always better, right?_

_“I’m sorry,” she says._

_“It is dangerous—it is,” she interrupts when Flynn opens his mouth to argue, “but you’re right. We...should think about it.”_

_Flynn watches her as she pushes herself off the couch, knocking the rest of her drink back before turning away from him._

_“I should get some sleep,” she says._

_“Lucy…” When Lucy looks back over her shoulder, Flynn’s face is inscrutable. But after a moment, he shakes his head and simply adds, “...good night.”_

_Rufus starts working on calculations the next day. Lucy tries not to think about it._

_That is, until she has to._

* * *

They lose Flynn at Gettysburg. 

Lucy notices the Rittenhouse agent too late to shout a warning, but the resulting gunshot rips a scream from her throat. 

“No!” 

She fires back and somehow takes out the agent, but her focus returns to Flynn immediately. 

(Later, she could swear time slowed in that moment.)

His face freezes in surprise as he looks down at his chest—the blood from the wound spreads rapidly, the stain blooming out from the point of impact. His eyes meet hers, his lips part—

—and then time speeds up again and he crumples to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut. 

Lucy starts toward him, her head, her ears full of white noise, but strong arms catch her around the waist and pull her away. 

(She fights Wyatt the whole way back to the Lifeboat. When they return to the present, she screams at him, shoves him when he tries to touch her. She knows—logically, she knows—Flynn was probably gone before he even hit the ground, but logic and grief don’t always mix well and he _pulled her away_ —)

It takes six hours before she seeks out Rufus. 

“I want to go back,” Lucy says. Her voice is rough, her throat raw from screaming, but her eyes are dry. 

“To Gettysburg?” Rufus asks, already shaking his head. “Lucy, he’s—”

“Not to Gettysburg,” she interrupts. 

_What if we could go back? Stop all of this before it ever started?_

(Stop all of it? She’s not sure she can. Flynn was the one who knew the most, the one who discovered Rittenhouse years before she ever heard the name. He was the one who found Anthony, who stole the Mothership, who set this whole course in motion. But...maybe she doesn’t have to _stop_ it so much as...guide him. That she can do.)

Rufus goes very still. 

“You want to travel on your own timeline.”

_Just a matter of numbers and finding someone crazy enough to give it a shot._

“You finished the calculations, right?” Lucy asks. 

“I—” Rufus blows out a breath. “Technically? Yes. But there are tests to run, simulations—”

“How long?”

Rufus looks for a moment like he’s going to argue, but whatever he sees in her face changes his mind. 

“Weeks,” he admits quietly. “Two weeks at least. But even then, even if the tests work, there’s no guarantee—Lucy, you could die. Or get lost in time or lose your mind. There are so many ways it could go wrong.”

_Or desperate enough…_

Lucy bites her lip, fighting to keep her arms at her sides instead of wrapping them around herself the way she wants to. 

“We can’t do this without him,” she replies. 

_I can’t do this without him._

(The pity in Rufus’ eyes is unbearable.)

“We can’t do this without you either,” he reminds. It’s so gentle it almost hurts. 

“It’ll work, Rufus,” Lucy swears. She doesn’t know how to explain it—he’s the engineer, so really, he’s the one who should know better—but she can feel it. In her bones. In her _soul_. She can make this work. 

“I’ll start running tests,” Rufus sighs.

“Two weeks?”

“At _least_.”

* * *

Lucy decides on a journal. 

Part of the choice is practical—she was gifted a few of them by her mother before she died, gorgeous leather volumes with her initials stamped in the corner, and one is still blank. It’s small, easy to carry, and easily accessible from their safehouse. 

The other part...well. She wanted him to have a guidebook. She might as well make it an actual book. 

The first time she picks up a pen, she almost stops. It hits her in that moment—the weight of what she’s doing. The fear of the unknown. What if she says too much? What if she says too little? What if even the smallest piece of information changes things so much that her reality becomes unrecognizable? What if she makes things even worse?

And then, the next hurdle—where to start? 

(In the early days, Anthony had a list of dates that were important to Rittenhouse. That was how Flynn got started. That list—or at least one particular date on it—was how he got her to listen to him at their first meeting. Would that stay the same? Would it still work out?)

In the end, she stops thinking so hard and just writes. Writes about the good, the bad, the achingly personal—in some cases, maybe too much of the personal. 

(Flynn’s a smart man. If he wants to, it won’t be difficult to read between the lines, to see the things she never told him when he was alive. But she doesn’t care. If it doesn’t work, it won’t matter anyway. If it does...she’ll cross that bridge when she comes to it.)

Two weeks. Lucy gets two weeks to prepare and it’s somehow an eternity and gone in the blink of an eye all at the same time. But she finishes the journal. That’s all that matters. 

“I made some adjustments,” Rufus tells her when he shows her the controls. “It’ll pilot itself. Just put the date, time, and coordinates into this panel here.”

When he turns to adjust the pilot’s seatbelt, Lucy catches his hand and squeezes it lightly. 

“Rufus...thank you.” 

“Thank me when you get back in one piece,” he replies, returning the squeeze. With that, he steps out of the time machine and Lucy turns back to the control panel. 

_Date, time, coordinates._

Lucy hasn’t prayed in a year, but she sends one up to whoever may be listening as the door of the Lifeboat closes. One minute later, the door opens again, and she steps out into the evening air, nine years and a different hemisphere away from where she started.

August 13, 2014. São Paulo, Brazil.


	2. Chapter 2

_“Tell me something?” Lucy asks._

_Flynn doesn’t look over, but his mouth quirks up wryly. “Like what?”_

_“Anything.”_

_Sweat beads across her skin as she stretches out on the boardinghouse bed. In the heat of high summer, where the air in the room seems to hold more water than oxygen, her corset is even more restrictive than usual, and Flynn seems almost as uncomfortable. Seated on the floor with his back against the wall, Flynn’s shirt is open at the collar, cravat long since abandoned—_

_(With no idea when Wyatt and Rufus will be back, Lucy is half-tempted to suggest they both just strip down to their underclothes. They’re both adults, after all. It would only be practical. But the way her pulse picks up when her eyes track over the lines of his throat, the dip between his collar bones—that stops her.)_

_“You’ll have to be more specific than that, Lucy,” Flynn replies._

_Lucy looks back to the ceiling, considering. There are any number of things she could ask, from the frivolous to the deeply personal._

_(Over a year since they met and there’s still so much she doesn’t know about him. It’s really not the time or the place to have a heart-to-heart, but then, there never seems to be a right time and place. Not when they’re always running, always fighting, always chasing Rittenhouse to the next moment in history and the next—)_

_God, the heat is oppressive._

_“Lucy?”_

_“Where did you go?” The question slips out unexpectedly, hangs in the air, but Lucy makes herself finish it anyway. “After—after Rittenhouse...where did you go?”_

_Flynn is quiet for several moments, the pause stretching on long enough that she considers taking it back. Just as she’s about to, he wets his lips and clears his throat._

_“São Paulo,” he replies._

_“Brazil?” She doesn’t know why that strikes her as odd. Perhaps because when Denise first gave her the rundown on him, she’d said he was in Eastern Europe. Somehow, Lucy had never really questioned that assumption._

_Flynn nods once, closing his eyes and resting his head back against the boards._

_“I wanted to disappear,” he says. “It’s one of the most populated cities in the world, you know. I didn’t think Rittenhouse would find me even if they were looking and I...I’d already lost everything. I didn’t know what to do, what was next. In a place like that, well. More likely than not, if I hadn’t been able to—no one would have missed me, at any rate.”_

_Lucy’s stomach drops as she reads between the lines, imagines him days out from losing his family, drowning in grief, struggling to see a way forward. It’s not a pleasant picture and she abruptly wishes she were closer, close enough to grab his hand perhaps, to ground them both in the moment instead of falling backwards into the past._

_(It’s patently absurd to want to say she would have missed him given that she didn’t know him, but the sentiment rises in her throat anyway until she swallows it back.)_

_“You didn’t stay though,” Lucy points out. “You came back. You found Anthony. Stole the Mothership.”_

_**Met me.** _

_“What changed?” She asks._

_Flynn shrugs._

_“August 13. I was at a bar not far from the cathedral. There was a wedding earlier in the day—it’s why I remember the date, because I saw a program on the ground. There was—I remember seeing the bride and groom taking photos, and they looked—they were so in love—”_

_Flynn breaks off, running a hand over his face._

_“I went back to the cathedral later, around eight maybe. I was drunk, I was...angry. A priest walked in on me shouting at the cross—honestly, he should have called the police.”_

_“He didn’t though,” Lucy fills in. Flynn shakes his head._

_“No. He made coffee. Sat with me, listened. I didn’t tell him everything, just the gist, but when I was done, he—he told me that it didn’t matter whether I was looking for vengeance or justice or something else entirely, I wasn’t going to find anything at the bottom of a glass or down the barrel of a gun. He was right.”_

_“Flynn—”_

_The door opens then, Wyatt and Rufus practically falling through it and bolting the door behind them._

_“So, good news, we took care of the sleeper agent,” Wyatt says. “Bad news, we pissed off a lot of people and definitely need to find another way out of here.”_

_With a pang of regret, Lucy shoots one last look at Flynn and gets up._

* * *

Lucy joked once, on a day they’d lost, a day when stopping Rittenhouse seemed impossible, that maybe she should run away to São Paulo too if it was so good for clarity. Flynn had looked right back and told her he’d show her around.

It’s ironic, then. That she has in fact done just that. Even if she’s planning to go back, it’s still running. Running through time, through space—having a time machine means you can go so much further than another city to hide from your problems. She’s left the entire present—future?—behind. 

The cathedral itself is easy enough to find, but it’s locating the bar that is half-guesswork, the details Flynn gave her over the years helpful, but incomplete. Even so, Lucy does manage it, at least she thinks so. Scanning the room from the doorway, her hands come up to fuss with her hair, just to give them something to do. For one panicked moment, she’s afraid she was wrong, that she’s in the wrong place, but then, sure enough, Flynn slips out from a booth in the back corner and approaches the bar. 

(Her heart stops.)

Before Lucy can talk herself out of it, she crosses the room, passing through the group of people crowded around tables and by the bar until she reaches Flynn’s booth and slides in to wait for his return. 

(This is the piece she’s struggled with the most—would it be better to let him go to the cathedral and try to find him after? Is it changing too much cutting out the middleman and taking the burden of talking Flynn out of his spiral entirely on herself? There’s no way to know.)

It’s dark in the booth and Lucy is dressed all in black, so she blends in enough that Flynn doesn’t notice her at first when he comes back to the table. It isn’t until he’s settled back in that he looks up and freezes. 

“I’m not here to hurt you, Garcia,” she says when his eyes track over her in a way she’s seen him look at others dozens if not hundreds of times, trying to determine if she’s a threat. 

“How do you know my name?”

“I—” The shadows under Flynn’s eyes are dark enough that it’s obvious he hasn’t been sleeping well, maybe not even at all. In addition, there’s resignation behind the wariness in his eyes—as if should she turn out to be Rittenhouse, he might not have it in him to put up more than a cursory fight. Lucy can’t recall ever seeing him quite so...defeated. 

(Not that she blames him for it. Not that she could.)

“—I know everything about you.” Flynn tenses further and starts to get up—on instinct, Lucy grabs his wrist. 

“Please don’t go. I just want to talk.”

Flynn twists out of her grasp easily. “If you really knew anything about me, you’d know I just want to be left alone,” he replies. 

“Two weeks ago, Rittenhouse killed your family,” Lucy says quickly. “Because you found out they’re paying Connor Mason a hell of a lot of money for something under the table. You did what you thought you were supposed to—reported it. Your contact at the NSA told you it would be taken care of. You—”

Her voice cracks, but she barrels forward anyway. He can’t walk away from her. He can’t. _She_ can’t—

“—Lorena got up in the middle of the night to check on Iris. She thought she heard her coughing. She didn’t—Garcia—”

“Stop.” Flynn is deathly pale as he grips the edge of the table, still caught between rising or staying. When he sits, Lucy isn’t sure it’s because he wants to or because he simply can’t bear to stand. 

“Who are you and how did you find me?”

(It’s surreal being in this position, introducing herself to him from across a table instead of in a field with the flaming wreckage of the Hindenburg flickering in the background. Take the time travel out of it, take Rittenhouse out of it, and it’s almost normal. Just two people meeting in a bar.) 

“My name is Lucy Preston,” she starts. “And as for how I found you...well, you told me.”

Flynn narrows his eyes. “I didn’t tell anyone where—”

Lucy waves a hand to cut him off, reaching into her bag to pull out the journal. 

“I know it doesn’t make sense right now,” she acknowledges. “But it will.”

“How?”

Her fingers trace the leather cover absently as she reaches for words. 

“The money that Rittenhouse is paying Connor Mason? They’re paying him to build them a time machine.” 

Lucy pauses briefly, waiting for Flynn to interrupt again, but when he doesn’t say a word, she continues. 

“It’s not finished yet, but it will be a little over two years from now. You stole it before he could hand it over to them and Rittenhouse, acting under the guise of Homeland Security, assembled a team to go after you. They needed a historian, which is where I came in. At the time, I didn’t know who they were—what they were. But it didn’t take long to figure that out, and I’ve done nothing but try to stop them since.”

“You’re talking about this like it’s already happened,” Flynn says, his expression unreadable. “Like you’re—you can’t really expect me to believe that you’re from the future, if that’s what you’re implying here.”

“When you were ten, you wanted to be a cowboy,” Lucy replies evenly, less rushed, less desperate than she’d been earlier since he at least isn’t trying to leave. “Your mother would buy you Tex Willer comics and you loved them. But you had to hide them in a shoebox under your bed because your father hated them.”

Flynn’s brow furrows as he reaches for his glass, but he doesn’t _say_ anything, so she keeps going. 

“You had your first kiss when you were sixteen. With your best friend, Dominic. He was the best man at your wedding and you didn’t know he was in love with you until he died in Somalia. In your arms, right?”

Flynn drains the glass. 

“You were terrified of being a father because of how yours was. And you were so glad when Iris turned out to be a girl because you thought there was less baggage attached to that—Garcia, I couldn’t have found out any of this from a file,” Lucy says. “I know because you told me all of it. Just like you told me where you would be on this day, at this time, in this year. I know you.”

Hand trembling, Flynn sets his glass back down, but he won’t meet her eyes. Without thinking, she reaches across the table and touches his face. 

Flynn jerks back from the touch, eyes wide as he looks between her and her hand. 

_Stupid_ , Lucy thinks, pulling her hand back slowly. She knows he hasn’t been touched, really touched, in two weeks. She knows the last person to do so was his wife. And this wasn’t the same as grabbing his wrist earlier. 

_Stupid._

His throat works as he swallows, and she can read the conflict and the question in his eyes before he asks. 

“What are we?” 

Perhaps it’s a question Lucy should have been prepared for, but when it comes, her mind goes blank. 

What are they? It wouldn’t be inaccurate to say friends, but that feels...woefully inadequate. The same goes for colleagues, partners—any careful, strictly platonic term doesn’t describe them, but neither does anything else. 

“We’re...quite the team,” she says finally.

His gaze flicks from her to the journal she has yet to hand over and back. Slowly, he wets his lips.

“A time machine,” he says.

Lucy nods. “I know it sounds crazy. Time travel. But it’s all real.”

“I think you should start at the beginning.” 

(That she can do.)


	3. Chapter 3

The Hindenburg is not the beginning. 

It’s _a_ beginning, to be sure—the first time Lucy travels through time, the first time she hears the name Rittenhouse—there’s no question it set the stage for everything that came after. But technically, it’s not the beginning, not the first step in the dance, the first page of the book. Not for their story. 

No, their story—Lucy and Flynn’s story—started nearly 15 years before he ever stole a time machine. Their story started with a dark night, a slick road near San Francisco, with Lucy’s car spinning out and crashing into the bay. Their story started with Flynn, on a side trip to California after visiting his mother, seeing the broken guardrail and pulling over, diving into the water, getting her out of the car as it sank. His phone rang right after he finished calling in the accident and whatever the message, it caused him to apologize and run off instead of waiting for highway patrol with her. 

She never forgot though. 

She hadn’t given him her name and he hadn’t given her his—it was dark enough that she couldn’t recall his face afterwards, only his voice—but he saved her life. 

He saved her life. 

That is their beginning. 

(It’s only fitting that she should do the same.)

* * *

They don’t stay in the bar. After an hour occupying a table without ordering anything else, they start attracting irritated looks, and Lucy isn’t exactly jumping at the thought of having an audience. She’s too sensitive to the weight of strange eyes on her, too wary about all the things that could still go wrong, whether they’re likely to or not. For what it’s worth, Flynn seems to feel similarly and doesn’t argue when she asks if they can go back to wherever he’s staying. 

(She’d explained the basics, the broadest strokes, still unsure about what she should or shouldn’t say. She’d answered some questions, but there are still plenty of things that still need saying by the time they leave.)

“You really do hate them. Rittenhouse,” he says, breaking the silence once they’re half a block away from the bar. His hands are in his pockets, but he still looks at her like she’s a puzzle he can’t quite figure out.

“So do you,” Lucy points out. 

“Yes, but I know why I do.”

Lucy turns that over in her head and bites the inside of her cheek as she considers her response.

“They’re evil,” she replies. “The way they think about people, the type of power they want to have, the things they’re willing to do to get it—they’re evil.”

“That’s not why you hate them though.”

Lucy narrows her eyes at Flynn and he merely raises a brow in response, daring her to say he’s wrong. 

(She should have expected this after earlier. Flynn is still Flynn—he hates not having all the answers and given the number of personal details she made clear she knows about him, it’s only reasonable that he might want to level the playing field. Not that she doesn’t say plenty in the journal, but he hasn’t read it yet, and besides, there’s a difference between words on a page and being able to confirm someone’s honesty with your own eyes.)

“Rittenhouse took everything from me,” she says. “They manipulated my whole life before I ever even knew they existed. And then, when I learned, when I decided to fight back, they took my sister. Later, they took others. The woman who was basically my surrogate mother. And finally, they took—”

_“No!”_

_You._

Lucy clears her throat and blinks hard, not looking at Flynn for fear that she’ll see blood spreading across his chest. 

_Get it together._

“I hate them for the same reasons you do, let’s leave it at that,” she finishes. 

“And you think coming here, giving me that book you have there, will change anything?” Flynn asks. “Will it bring the people you love back? Will it bring my family back? From everything you’ve said, I get the impression we aren’t exactly _winning_ —”

“I think I had to try,” Lucy snaps. “Because after everything, I still believe that somehow, some way we _can_ save the people we love. And because there are things in life that are worth fighting for even if you don’t win. You know who I learned that from?”

“Who?”

“You.”

It’s Flynn’s turn to look away, shame and exhaustion echoing in the slump of his shoulders. And as quickly as her flash of anger had come, it dissipates. 

“I know you’re tired,” she says, gentling her tone. “I know you’re grieving. And I know you’ve been fighting wars for most of your life—you’re not eager to jump into another one, I get it.”

Lucy links her hands behind her back so she won’t try to touch him again. (God, she wants to.)

“But Garcia, this is bigger than you. It’s bigger than me. It’s bigger than any of us. And you won’t—you won’t be alone.”

He still doesn’t look back, but the corner of his mouth ticks up. “Because you and I are, what was it you said? _Quite the team_?” 

“Yeah,” Lucy replies, relaxing a fraction for the first time since she arrived because maybe, just maybe, this might actually work. He’s listening. He believes her. “Yeah, we really are.”

Flynn stops by a dilapidated staircase, flaked paint and splintering wood leading up to a set of what she assumes are equally run-down apartments. Exactly the kind of place she assumed he would be staying—out of the way, somewhere no one is likely to spend too much time looking at or around—but there’s a pang in her chest nonetheless. 

He does look at her then instead of immediately starting up the stairs, and there’s genuine curiosity in his expression instead of suspicion. 

“What did I say?” Flynn asks. “When you decided to do this? You said it was dangerous, and I—Lucy?”

When he’d asked his question back at the bar, Lucy had been unprepared to give an answer. This question, she did prepare for. At least, she prepared an answer. 

She didn’t prepare for her own reaction. She didn’t expect it to feel like—

 _Like a gunshot to the chest?_

Lucy knows it shows on her face, knows that’s the reason Flynn cut himself off and is staring with concern. Swallowing back the bile that threatens to rise, she pulls herself together to give him an answer.

“Nothing,” she replies, her voice shockingly steady to her own ears. “You didn’t say anything.”

She can see the moment it clicks for him. 

(It was the one thing she swore she wouldn’t let him know. And yet...she can’t bring herself to regret that he knows.)

“I see.”

Flynn opens his mouth to say something else, but immediately thinks better of it, turning to go up the stairs. And Lucy follows, because well...her job isn’t done yet. 

The inside of his apartment is dark, the only light from a streetlamp filtering through cracks in the blinds. Flynn is clearly used to it, but Lucy’s foot catches something when she steps inside—a stray nail, maybe an uneven floorboard—and instead of passing easily over the threshold, she falls forward, wincing as she prepares to hit the ground. But the impact doesn’t come. 

Flynn catches her, one arm curving around her waist while his other hand cups her elbow for additional stability. They’re perfectly innocent touches, and for a perfectly innocent reason, but it doesn’t matter—she’s still in Flynn’s arms, close enough that there’s little for her hands to do other than rest against his chest, and being _held_ by Garcia Flynn in any capacity is...overwhelming. 

(He’s not hers. Her Flynn died in Gettysburg and even if this works, even if she’s able to bring him back, she doesn’t realistically expect him to be the same as the version she lost. 

But, god. _God._ He smells the same and his arms are the same and Lucy can’t breathe—she can’t _breathe_ because she’s spent two weeks holding back, focusing on this mission, barely keeping her head above the ocean of grief that threatens to drown her at every turn. Two weeks on a Hail Mary that they all used to think was impossible, but it _worked_ and she’s _in his arms_ —)

“Lucy?” 

She doesn’t realize she’s closed her eyes until they open again at Flynn’s quiet rasp of her name. When he starts to pull away, she’s struck with a sudden, cold panic, and her fingers curl tightly in the front of his shirt. 

“Wait—“

( _Drowning, drowning, drowning_ , just like she had been years ago when her car went over that bridge. And just like then she can’t help clinging to him, because he’s the only lifeline she has.)

He stills.

* * *

_“Lucy, wait,” Flynn says as she tugs him to his feet. “We don’t even have music.”_

__

_(Three years in and they’re all riding high on a solid win for once, although Rufus and Jiya have long since vanished off into their room for a more private celebration and Wyatt begged off before the last round to get some real sleep. Lucy is giddy, still in stolen clothes, although her hair has fallen from its carefully pinned curls, and even Flynn hasn’t been able to stop smiling.)_

__

_“So?” Lucy replies. “You promised me a dance back in 1945. I want to see those moves you claimed to be so proud of.”_

__

_His chuckle washes over her like a wave at low tide, warming her from the inside, and Lucy bites her lip as she looks up at him._

__

_“Come on, Garcia,” she coaxes. “Dance with me.”_

__

_“You’re drunk,” Flynn points out, but he twirls her after and it’s Lucy’s turn to laugh._

__

_“Not that drunk.” She betrays herself by catching herself a little too hard against his chest when she spins back into him. “Okay, maybe a little.”_

__

_The vibrations from his laugh buzz through her as he slips his free arm around her waist to steady her._

__

_“How about a slow one?” Flynn suggests. Lucy lets him pull her closer, resting her head on his chest and humming absently as they sway together._

__

_(If she closes her eyes and listens to the steady beat of his heart, she can almost pretend that this means more than it does.)_

__

_Eventually, her humming slows, then stops, and Flynn stops swaying. But he doesn’t let go. Lucy opens her eyes, looking up at him, and swallows hard. Her head is spinning, she’s too warm, but the longer she looks at him, the more she can’t think of a reason why she shouldn’t—_

__

_Her kiss lands at the corner of his mouth and Flynn shivers._

__

_“Lucy…” His arm tightens around her for the briefest of moments before he releases her and steps back. “It’s late.”_

__

_“Not that late,” she replies._

__

_“Late enough.”_

__

_“Garcia—” Lucy catches the sleeve of his suit jacket and he closes his eyes for a moment as though praying for strength. “Would it be so bad?”_

__

_Am I so bad?_

__

_Flynn’s next laugh is hollow as he swipes his free hand over his face._

__

_“No,” he admits, because even now he won’t lie to her. “Which is exactly why I can’t. Lucy, you deserve—”_

__

_He cuts himself off and gently extracts his arm from her grasp._

__

_“I’m sorry. Goodnight, Lucy.” he says._

* * *

__

It’s selfish. God, it’s so selfish. But it’s like she doesn’t have control over her limbs anymore. One of her hands spreads out across Flynn’s chest, her fingers splaying wide—she doesn’t look up at his face, can’t bear to see the same gentle rejection she’s seen a hundred times before in even younger eyes, but she can’t stop touching him either. He doesn’t stop her though. He lets her stay close, lets her touch—

_He’s not yours. Not yours._

Lucy’s hand slides up his chest, his throat, her fingers curling around the back of his neck, into his hair. She leans up on her toes, but stops herself before she actually tries to kiss him. It’s a bridge slightly too far—she didn’t come here for this, to be rejected again. She didn’t come here to put that on him either. 

“I’m sorry,” she breathes. 

_Let go _, she tells herself. _3...2...1…___

“Lucy.” When she meets his eyes, they’re soft. There’s still pain in them, pain that mirrors the pain she feels herself—grief, loss—but there’s gentleness too. And it’s her turn to freeze when he ducks his head and brushes his mouth ever so lightly over hers. 

_”I see.”_

_Everything._

Lucy doesn’t know if it’s pity or compassion—she’s not sure she cares. A desperate noise escapes her and her hand tightens in his shirt as she leans up on her toes and kisses him harder. 

(He’s not hers, and god knows she isn’t Lorena, but for a few minutes, they can pretend. In their shared grief, their pain, they can do this. If his hands tug too hard when he pulls her hair out of its ponytail, if she tastes salt when she licks into his mouth and grips him too tightly, well. Neither of them care to comment.) 

* * *

Flynn walks her back to the Lifeboat the next day, the journal tucked under his arm. Lucy figures after everything she’s said, it can’t hurt to let him see it. At least, not more than anything else.

(If nothing else, the sight of his wide eyes as he takes in a real time machine will be burned into her mind forever.) 

“Lucy—” 

She’s just about to hoist herself up into the machine when Flynn calls her name and makes her look back. 

“Yes?” 

“I—” He looks down at the journal, turning it over once in his hands before looking back up to her. “—thank you. For this, for—thank you.” 

“You’re welcome,” Lucy replies. “And...good luck, I guess.” 

She’s just turned around when Flynn adds, “I hope you find everything you’re looking for.” 

Biting her lip, Lucy nods once, even though he can’t see her face. 

“Yeah,” she says quietly. “Yeah, you too.” 

She doesn’t let herself look back again. When the door of the Lifeboat closes, her eyes burn with unshed tears, but she still refuses to let them fall. Instead, taking a few deep breaths, Lucy starts the sequence to bring the Lifeboat home. 

And then, just as quickly as she came, she’s gone. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so...there were certain things in this chapter that I went back and forth on. And ultimately, I felt like leaving it open, recognizing that mileages may vary re: anything that may or may not have happened in Flynn's apartment other than that kiss. I have my own thoughts and am happy to share if requested, and had my reasons for writing the kiss at all, but...yes. Anyway. That's chapter 3.


	4. Chapter 4

Time travel is always unpleasant. Lucy likes to think she’s gotten used to it—at the very least, she hasn’t thrown up in years—but the fact that it’s become bearable doesn’t make it enjoyable. Traveling in the Lifeboat feels a little like how she imagines it would feel to be stretched out and squeezed through a straw, only to snap back together on landing—dizzying, sickening, always leaving her with a moment where her limbs don’t quite feel like her own. But, she’s gotten used to it. 

The return trip from São Paulo proves otherwise. Exponentially worse than anything Lucy’s felt before, the seconds seem like hours as her brain rattles in her skull, as pain splinters out from every pore of her skin—she wonders vaguely if it’s the end, if she won’t make it home after all, if being ripped apart and relegated to a bunch of floating atoms in the time stream is the consequence of traveling on her own timeline and changing things. 

(She can’t bring herself to regret it if so.)

And then, abruptly, it stops. 

The normal side effects are still there—Lucy’s head spins, her legs are jello, bile rises in her throat—but the Lifeboat is still. On the dash, the date is the same as when she first left, but late evening rather than morning. 

She did it. She made it back. 

Even with a splitting headache and nausea, Lucy can’t help a wave of giddiness, inadvertent giggles bubbling up. She really made it back. She told Rufus she would, told him she believed in him, that it would work, but privately she was always prepared to not survive it. 

_Did it work though? Did it save him?_

As quickly as her elation had come, it vanishes—instead, Lucy freezes, staring at the Lifeboat door. She has to open it to find out. 

Part of her doesn’t want to. If it didn’t work and she doesn’t open the door, she won’t have to find out. The last memory she has of Flynn now is of him alive, strong and determined, watching her leave São Paulo with the sun shining down on him. She can probably manage one more trip without charging the Lifeboat—she could drop herself somewhere in the past, start over, forget about fighting, forget about Rittenhouse, just live out the rest of her days with her memories. It’s unforgivably selfish, but for a moment she wants it more than anything. 

(There was a night after Lucy lost Amy—after she came home from 1964 to find her sister’s body on the floor of their kitchen—when she considered the same thing. She broke down in Flynn’s arms that night, sobbing that she couldn’t do it anymore, that she needed to stop, to run away, to disappear, that she was a teacher, not a soldier, and she wasn’t strong enough to continue. He held her through all of it, for hours, without judgment or argument. And when she finally exhausted herself enough to drift off, he kissed her forehead and murmured a soft _You’re stronger than you know._ She still doesn’t know if he realized she wasn’t actually asleep.)

_Ignorance is bliss, right?_

But, no. She can’t run now. Just like she couldn’t years ago. And as much as she’s afraid to know for certain whether Flynn is alive, she also has to know. She has to know if it was worth it. 

Swallowing hard, Lucy unbuckles her seatbelt and hits the button to open the door. Her legs are shaky as she makes her way to the opening, whether from nerves or aftershocks from the trip, she can’t be sure. But when she looks out, she has to catch herself on the edge of the door because her knees buckle.

_Flynn._

There he is. Years older than the version she just left, but alive. Alive and standing there expectantly with his arms crossed and the smallest of smiles on his lips. And the look in his eyes—god, it’s open and soft and fond in a way that makes Lucy’s heart skip, and it’s directed completely at her. At her. As though he—

_Loves her._

“Need some help?” Flynn asks, pushing off the wall and walking over to the Lifeboat. 

Lucy’s mind goes blank, but her throat is dry enough that she’s not sure she could make words come even if she knew what to say. Is he—are they—?

Without waiting for a response, Flynn reaches up and grips her waist, lifting her gently out of the ship. Lucy’s hands settle on his shoulders for balance as she tries not to let her surprise show on her face.

For half a moment, she tries to rationalize the situation. She’s making assumptions based on—what? A look and a helpful gesture? But then, Flynn sets her on her feet and ducks his head and—oh. _Oh._

There’s no explaining away a kiss. Especially not one like this. It’s soft and sweet, over too quickly, too familiar to be anything but habit. The ease of it—he must have kissed her like this a hundred times, a thousand times maybe. She may not remember, may not have lived it, but she can’t deny the obvious conclusion that’s staring her in the face. Somehow, not only did her trip save his life, but it caused them to...be together. 

“Welcome home,” Flynn says, one hand coming up to tuck a stray piece of hair behind her ear. 

Lucy isn’t sure whether to laugh or cry. She was prepared for it to have not worked. She was prepared for him to have lived but for their relationship to be limited. She was prepared for the possibility of a miracle happening that also brought his family back. 

She wasn’t prepared for this. 

“I—” What is there to say? What do you say when the man you love comes back to life? What do you say when after years of pulling away from further intimacy, he’s suddenly the one initiating it? 

He initiated it in São Paulo as well, but that was different. She has no illusions about what that was. And yet—was that the change that made the difference? Was it the journal? 

(She feels oddly like she’s cheated, rigged the system in her favor—she was fine with it when the goal was to save his life, but she never expected—)

“Lucy?” 

Lucy starts to take a step back, but a wave of dizziness crashes into her so hard that she can’t help tightening her grip on him for balance. 

“Flynn—” It’s all she manages to force out before she’s rocked by a spike of pain in her temples. 

The edges of her vision blur as background noise begins to fade away—she’s only vaguely aware of Flynn calling Rufus over. But her _head_ —

_It hurts. God, it hurts, why—_

It’s a blessing when the world goes black.

* * *

_May 6, 1937_

_“We need to talk, Lucy.”_

_With the air full of smoke and ash, the flickering of flame the only light cutting through the clouds, Flynn looks like the devil himself. And Lucy—Lucy is afraid. She doesn’t want to be. She hates that she is. But she’s a history teacher—just a history teacher—and here’s a man with a gun, who stole a time machine, who may have killed his family, and he’s pointing that gun at her, so yes. She’s afraid._

_(The crash wasn’t his fault, that was just history. And as far as she can tell, he hasn’t actually done anything in the past. Yet. But that doesn’t mean he won’t. It doesn’t mean he isn’t dangerous.)_

_“How do you know my name?”_

_Flynn’s brow furrows. “You don’t know?”_

_“Know what?”_

_“You’re on a list,” he replies. “A list put together by Rittenhouse.”_

_“I don’t know what that is,” Lucy says. “I’ve never heard that name before.”_

_“No? Because they’ve heard of you.”_

_He reaches into his jacket and pulls out a worn page, holding it up so she can see. It’s almost all dates and coordinates, typed neatly in stark black typewriter font, but there are a few with initials next to them. A BC next to a date from 1954, JR from back in the 1770s—and at the bottom, LP next to March 13, 2003._

_“It’s funny,” Flynn says. “These other initialed dates, I don’t know what’s important about them. I’m not even sure where to start figuring it out. But this one...it could have been a coincidence, but I thought, what were the chances they would just happen to make note of the day I saved a young woman from drowning? So I looked up the accident report. LP...Lucy Preston. Historian. Professor at Stanford, very impressive.”_

_“Stop.” Lucy’s mind is racing—her eyes are still locked on the page, ice chilling her from the inside. She also wants to brush it off as a coincidence, but her birthday is earlier up on the list, and her mother’s. Then, the rest of his statement registers—_

_“Wait, you?” She asks. “The man who pulled me out, that was—that was you?”_

_(And yet, even as she asks, his voice is pulling up the memory, settling into the grooves of **”It’s okay, you’re okay”** like a puzzle piece clicking into place.)_

_Flynn nods once, refolding the list and tucking it back into his jacket._

_“So, why does Rittenhouse care about a random car accident?” He asks._

_“I don’t know,” Lucy insists. “Like I said, I’ve never heard that name—”_

_“I believe you,” Flynn replies. “But you need to find out. I’m not the enemy here, Lucy, they are.”_

_“How do I know you didn’t make that list yourself? Why should I believe anything from a man who killed his own family?”_

_Flynn flinches as though she’s struck him. For half a moment in the flickering light, his face is raw and open, the pain written there too acute to be fake._

_(She’s shaken by that look—because if he didn’t, then she’s been lied to. And if she’s been lied to about that—)_

_“Lucy!”_

_Flynn snaps into action at the sound of Wyatt’s voice, grabbing Lucy and pulling her tight against his chest as he turns his gun on the other man._

_“Let her go,” Wyatt demands._

_“Put the gun down and I will,” Flynn counters._

_“You’ll kill me.”_

_Flynn tips his head. “Maybe. Maybe not. That’s just a risk you’ll have to take, isn’t it?”_

_Wyatt meets Lucy’s eyes, visibly conflicted. And she makes a split-second decision._

_“Put the gun down, Wyatt,” she says. “Please.”_

_“I can’t trust him,” he replies._

_“Please,” Lucy repeats, because for some reason—maybe because he saved her life, maybe because she doesn’t believe he killed his family, maybe just because she has far more questions than answers and she’s wary of anyone having a government-sanctioned license to kill—for some reason, she’s far more inclined to trust Flynn than Wyatt’s information at the moment._

_Wyatt looks away for a fraction of a second, but it’s enough of an opening. Flynn pushes her hard toward the other man, hard enough that she crashes into him and knocks him off balance. By the time Wyatt gets his gun up again, Flynn is gone, vanished into the smoke._

_“Are you okay?” Wyatt asks. “Did he hurt you?”_

_Lucy shakes her head slowly. “No,” she replies. “No, he—we were just talking.”_

_“What did he say?”_

_Maybe it’s paranoia, maybe it’s reasonable suspicion, but either way, Lucy has reservations about revealing too much. Or...anything._

_“Nothing. Just that he knew my name. We didn’t get very far.”_

_If Wyatt doesn’t believe her, he certainly doesn’t say._

_“Let’s go home.”_

_(That night, she asks Amy if she’s ever heard of Rittenhouse.)_

* * *

“What’s happening to her?”

Flynn’s voice breaks through the fog enveloping her, but it’s still distant, like he’s in a different room, or like Lucy’s underwater. She can’t open her eyes, can’t move, can’t speak—she’s just suspended in the moment, waiting to be swept away again. 

“I don’t know.” 

Rufus. Worried, anxious—Lucy hasn’t heard that particular tone from him except in regard to Jiya. 

“You said this was safe.”

“I _said_ that the tests indicated it should work. There were always going to be risks.”

“You—”

“Enough.” And that’s a new voice, one Lucy hasn’t heard in years. Denise? Could it really be— “Flynn, take a breath. Picking a fight won’t help anything.” 

“I just—” A shuddering exhale, then the creak of a chair. “I can’t lose her.”

“I know.”

A stray thought filters through her mind—a fractured bit of memory, a joke that landed badly—

_Who knew the guy who shot Lincoln could be so soft?_

_That doesn’t make sense. Flynn didn’t shoot Lincoln_ , Lucy thinks, arguing with her own subconscious. Although, even her thoughts are muted. Hazy. 

_That was—that was—_

And then, as quickly as the thought comes, it’s gone, and Lucy slips back into unconsciousness.

* * *

_“You think I’m here to make this worse?”_

_They’re in a train station in 1865, and Flynn’s tone is incredulous, his offense plain on his face._

_Lucy’s brow furrows. “Aren’t you?”_

_“No,” Flynn replies. “In fact, if this works, it should hopefully make a lot of things much better. For a lot of people.”_

_Lucy takes that in, then freezes when it registers._

_“You want Lincoln to live.”_

_“Don’t you?” Flynn asks._

_“I—we can’t.”_

_“Why not?”_

_**Why not?** _

 

The dreams—or memories, some of them are memories—come faster and faster. They slide from one to another almost too fast for her to keep up. 

A desert shoot-out over a nuclear weapon— _But we’ve never been to Vegas—_

Nazi Germany— _“You think I like helping these bastards? You think I sleep at night?”_ —

Russia, during the Revolution, that was real— _“I take issue with the senseless murder of children—”_

_“She and I are going to be quite the team one day.”_

_“You have a choice right now!”_

_“What if he led you to me?”_

_“That’s not why I’m here.”_

_Please—_

“Please, wake up, Lucy. Please.” 

Flynn’s voice breaks through again, but this time the fog begins to recede. His hand is in hers, she can feel it—her fingers twitch and he squeezes tighter. 

“Lucy?”

Her head is killing her still, although it’s different from before—a steady, throbbing ache rather than stabbing pain. It’s too full, her thoughts, her mind scrambled. She’s waiting for the dreams to fade away, these strange visions of Flynn and Wyatt and others—some of her mother even, oddly enough—and yet, they don’t disappear. 

“Lucy?” Flynn repeats, his free hand gently stroking her cheek. 

_“I guess what I meant is that I’d like to get to know you.”_

They don’t disappear. As if maybe they aren’t dreams at all. As if maybe—

Slowly, Lucy forces her eyes open.

“Thank God.” 

Her heart squeezes at the sight of Flynn, but she also knows that’s a situation she can’t deal with yet. Not yet. She has too many questions, too much to sort through. And although her tongue is heavy and her throat like sandpaper, she manages to put one sentence together.

“I need to talk to Rufus.”


	5. Chapter 5

Flynn leaves the medical bay as soon as Rufus comes in, making it as far as the end of the hallway before he slides down the wall to the floor and _breathes_ with his head in his hands. 

He knew—he knew something was off with Lucy. It was clear from the way she froze when he kissed her, the way she looked at him with shock and awe and no small hint of pain and guilt, the way she called him _Flynn_ when he’s been _Garcia_ almost exclusively for months—

He knew. But then, Lucy blacked out in his arms, and, well. Emergencies have a way of reorganizing your priorities. During the hours he spent waiting for her to wake up, worried that perhaps she never would, that was all he could focus on. If her hair was a little different than when she left, if her outfit wasn’t quite how he remembered it looking—all of that was secondary to his one, desperate thought of _please, God, bring her back to me._

And then, she woke up. She woke up and looked at him with broken eyes and asked to talk to Rufus and everything that had been secondary was suddenly at the front of his mind. 

She’s not his Lucy. Flynn doesn’t know how, or why, or what happened, but he can tell that much just from those few moments. He’s not an idiot—she wouldn’t want to talk to Rufus immediately after waking up unless she had questions only he could answer. Time travel questions. Reality and mechanics questions. And Flynn—he left because he couldn’t bear to hear her ask those questions, to get the confirmation from her own lips that she’s not...his. 

(Love is a fickle thing. Not that it’s always been difficult for him—with Dominic it was simple, best friends crashing together in wartime and refusing to let go, and even if Flynn hadn’t known how Dominic felt, his own feelings were easy enough to name. With Lorena, he started falling the moment he bumped into her in the streets of Dubrovnik, when she flirted boldly enough to make him tongue-tied and dizzy, and by the morning after their first time, when she kissed him and said he was the best man she’d ever known, he knew. He just knew.

Lucy was different. Lucy was difficult. Between the version of her he met in Brazil, the journal, and the Lucy he finally came to know personally, there was something almost Austenian in loving her. He was in the middle before he knew he’d even begun. But even then, even when he realized, it took months, years even, for the two of them to come together that way, for him to accept that perhaps she really could love him in return. And now, when they finally have, when he’s settled and sure and he loves _her_ , not just the grieving shade who gave him hope, not just the legend in a journal, but the real her...she’s gone.)

The air shifts next to him and Flynn hears the scuff of shoes against the floor before someone settles next to him. 

“Did you know this would happen?” He’s not angry—part of him wonders if he should be, but he’s spent years using anger as a substitute for grief and gotten nowhere—resignation is all he can muster. There’s a raw ache in his chest, the loss like an open wound—he may not survive this one, but the feeling at least is an old companion by now. 

Jiya shakes her head. “I had a vision right before the Lifeboat appeared,” she admits. “That’s why I wasn’t in the room. But I didn’t—I wouldn’t have told her to go if I’d realized…”

“Realized what?”

There’s a pause, a silence that stretches on long enough that Flynn almost repeats himself, but then Jiya sighs. 

“There are so many universes out there,” she says. “So many time streams. You all know the basic mechanics by now, that if you change something in the past, it changes the future, or at least _a_ future, but that’s not the end of the story.”

“No?”

“No. It’s like…” Jiya plays with her fingers as she searches for the words, staring at the far wall as though she’s seeing something else entirely. “...a tapestry. And each color represents a different...parent universe so to speak. And all the threads of that color are all the different timelines that came out of a single starting place. When Lucy and Wyatt showed up to help us save Rufus, they weren’t from the future—our future—they were from a different universe. A completely separate set of threads. If we’re yellow, they were blue, does that make sense?”

“Enough,” Flynn agrees, tipping his head back to rest against the wall. “But that doesn’t explain what happened to Lucy.”

“She’s the original. Lucy Prime if we’re going to get Trekkie with it.” Jiya glances over, her eyes refocusing as she looks at him. “Usually, when something changes, it just creates a new thread. But those changes aren’t being made from a time where we already exist. When they are, the universe has to course correct to adjust, like a rubber band snapping back after it’s been stretched too far. If it’s what I think, she went back to give you the journal and there was nowhere for her to come back _to_ , so when she tried, at the same time our Lucy went off to do the same thing—snap.” 

Flynn flinches at the metaphor. _Snap._

He thinks back to São Paulo, back to the memories that serve as just another piece of evidence that Lucy—his Lucy—didn’t make it there. Because his memories are full of a Lucy dressed all in black, who put on a strong front but couldn’t hide the grief that lingered around her like a shroud. Grief for him. For the Garcia Flynn she lost. The Garcia Flynn she loved. 

_”What did I say? When you decided to do this?”_

_”Nothing. You didn’t say anything._

(In fact, he had. In this timeline, he had. They argued about her going—he tried to say it was over, it was done, Rittenhouse was gone, she didn’t need to take the risk, but she thought it was important. Just in case. In case she’d created some sort of time loop that would undo all their hard work if she didn’t go back to give him the journal—Jiya and Rufus couldn’t say definitively what would happen, so Lucy insisted. He begged her not to go, ice in his veins, because he couldn’t lose her, he couldn’t—

_You won’t_ , she breathed against his lips when their respective frustrations boiled over into sex. _You won’t lose me._ And finally, he acquiesced despite his misgivings, because the last thing he wanted was for her to leave mad at him.

They couldn’t have predicted this.) 

If the Lucy lying in the med bay talking to Rufus is really the Lucy he met in São Paulo...there’s a sick irony in that. Because that Lucy, journal Lucy, he did love her. He loved her first. She saved his life, she gave him hope, guidance, _everything_ —how could he _not_ love her? But she wasn’t real—after that night, he couldn’t see her, couldn’t talk to her, couldn’t touch her—and the all too real version he kept running into across time couldn’t stand him. He had to let go, he had to do better, because he couldn’t afford to fuck up the chance of having at least some connection with the Lucy in front of him. 

Maybe this is the universe’s way of getting back at them—he died, Lucy went back in time to save his life, and it let her. For a price. 

Do they not get to be happy? Do they not deserve to be happy? Haven’t they suffered enough? Apparently not.

(Lord knows his sins are many and varied, his hands soaked with enough blood he’ll never wash the stains off, but _Lucy_ —Lucy’s no angel, he knows that, but her hands at least are far cleaner. She deserves better to have the rug yanked out from under her again—or his Lucy would have. He supposes he doesn’t actually know this one.)

“I’m sorry,” Jiya says quietly.

Flynn shakes his head. “You didn’t know. I believe that.”

“Still.”

Down the hall, the door opens and Rufus steps out, stopping short when he sees the two of them. 

“You put it together then,” he says. It’s not a question. 

Flynn nods once, unable to make himself ask what Lucy said to him. 

“For what it’s worth, she still remembers. Everything. It’s not Lucy, but it also...kinda is? She has her memories of her timeline, and then all of ours, it’s just sort of...jumbled up right now.”

(Flynn doesn’t know if that makes it better or worse. Possibly worse.)

“She wants to see you,” Rufus offers, as if unsure what else to say. Flynn can’t blame him—what _is_ there to say? “She thinks the two of you should talk.”

“No.” It’s a visceral reaction, not a conscious thought. Flynn hardly realizes he’s speaking until he’s already said it, and then he’s pushing himself to his feet. “No, I can’t. Not right now.”

(He would give her anything. _Anything_. But something in him cracks and he can’t—he can’t see her without shattering and that’s the last thing he’s prepared to do at the moment.)

“Flynn—”

“Let him be,” Jiya interjects, and Rufus closes his mouth. The silence echoes in Flynn’s ears as he walks away. 

Back in his room— _their_ room, his and Lucy’s—Flynn collapses on the bed with a shuddering exhale. Lying back, he scrubs his hands over his face and tries to feel less like he’s bleeding out. And yet, all he can think of is Lucy. Lucy, and when his eyes catch the string of photo booth polaroids on the bedside table from their first official date, Gettysburg. 

Or rather, what happened after. 

The first time Flynn kissed her may have been in a favela in São Paulo, but the second time was years later, in a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere, after almost getting shot hours before. 

When he closes his eyes, it’s the only thing he can see. 

_”That was a really stupid thing you did today,” Lucy says. It’s late—everyone else has long since gone to bed, but Lucy insisted on making sure he was okay for the umpteenth time._

_“I was protecting you,” Flynn argues. “You could have died.”_

_“You could have died!” Lucy throws down the antiseptic she’d been reapplying to a scrape on his face and crosses to the sink to wash her hands. He can’t see her face, but her voice is clear enough—she’s angry with him, although he’s not sure why._

_“I’m a soldier, it comes with the territory,” he replies._

_“That’s not—” The water shuts off and Lucy is as quiet as she’s been the whole evening when she picks up a hand towel._

_“Not what?” Flynn asks._

_“Who protects you?” When Lucy turns around again, any frustration he may have felt dies in his throat at the look on her face. “You protect all of us, but who protects you?”_

_“Lucy…”_

_“I can’t lose you.” Her voice cracks, but she doesn’t look away, and that look alone pins him in place._

_“You’re not expendable,” she adds, stepping close enough that she can rest her hands on his chest. “Not to me. Garcia—”_

_Flynn swallows hard, barely breathing as she tips her face up._

_(They’ve been dancing around something since Chinatown, since an almost-confession that neither of them were ready for. But she’s the one who started this, and unlike all the other times, there’s no hesitation on her face.)_

_“Garcia, please.” Lucy shifts up on her toes, her hands moving from his chest to twine behind his neck and pull him down. He doesn’t resist. And when he doesn’t stop her, when he doesn’t ask questions, her mouth finds his and it’s everything, everything, everything—_

 

No, he can’t go see her. Not yet. Guilt weighs heavy in his stomach, knowing everything this other Lucy risked, what she did to save him, how grateful he is for all of it. But he can’t. He needs time. 

Just time. 

Without another thought, Flynn reaches for the lamp cord and the room goes dark. And then, fitfully, he sleeps.


End file.
